


Just Like a Heatwave

by Severina



Category: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Genre: Community: hc_bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-04
Updated: 2013-11-04
Packaged: 2017-12-31 10:23:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1030575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You passed out. That old bastard probably saved your life," Matt says. He leans forward, swipes a hand through his hair. "Jesus, McClane. What were you thinking?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Like a Heatwave

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJ's hc_bingo community, for the prompt "heat stroke". With thanks to Brian & Justin for lending me a line.
> 
> * * *

John wakes to a saline drip in his arm and fluorescent lights blinding his eyes. He blinks, tries to sort out the confused images of the last few hours. He remembers the sun beating relentlessly on the back of his neck, the sweat soaking through the thin, frayed material of the old wife-beater he'd thrown on to dig in the dirt. 

Then – Holly. Leaning over him from a seat at the side of the bed, bitching because the toilet had overflowed and the bathroom tiles were flooded in thick, squirming worms. Except it had been the kitchen drain that had backed up and there were no worms and that had happened the year that Lucy turned three, a lifetime ago.

John frowns and closes his eyes, raises the hand that's not hampered by the IV line to scrub at his face. He freezes when he hears the creaking of the chair, sure that when he turns it will be Holly sitting there, Holly without any grey in her hair and no tiny crows-feet at the corner of her eyes, Holly as she was back when he was barely out of uniform and still had a full head of hair himself, receding though his hairline may have been. He turns his head slowly, blinks against the sunlight streaming through the window and backlighting the person in the seat. 

Matt leans forward, out of the light. "You're awake," he says.

"Can't slip anything past you," John says. He can hear the grouchiness in his voice, but doesn't bother to try to stifle it. He's got the mother of all headaches pressing at his temples and apparently had one doozy of a nightmare, and he's somehow managed to land himself in the hospital – again. He deserves to be grouchy. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"What am I…?" Matt starts, before pressing his lips together and steepling his fingers, rolling his eyes skyward as if beseeching the heavens. John knows that look, and opens his mouth to shut it down before it can lead to where he knows it always leads, but he's too late. 

"Okay," Matt says, index finger waving, "I may not know a lot about how to do this whole boyfriend thing, but I've got the hospital visits part down pretty solid, John. My boyfriend gets shot in the line of duty, I sit in the waiting room with a bunch of sour-faced cops who reek of nicotine and Old Spice until he comes out of surgery. My boyfriend jumps off a third story window ledge to nail the bad guy, I sit and watch him get the stitches. And my boyfriend stupidly gets sunstroke, of all fucking things, I sit by the bed and listen to him mumble to people that aren't here and wait for him to wake up. So yeah, what I'm doing here is what I'm always doing here, McClane. Waiting for them to fix your sorry ass." Matt slumps back in the chair, shakes his head. "What the hell were you doing today?"

John pinches his lips closed, tries to ignore the way his chest tightens painfully when Matt throws around that word. _Boyfriend_. Like it weighs nothing. But the kid has put in more than his share of hospital time, and John figures the least he owes him is an explanation for this one. The last and final one. 

"I was gardening," he says tightly.

"Gardening, McClane, really? In the middle of a heatwave? You do realize the UV index was in the double digits today, right? Mr. Rubenstein said you were outside for hours!"

"That old bastard got nothing better to do than spy on me?"

"You passed out. That old bastard probably saved your life," Matt says. He leans forward, swipes a hand through his hair. "Jesus, McClane. What were you thinking?"

I was thinking," John snaps out, "that it was you that wanted the goddamn garden in the first place. 'Gotta go organic, John. Mass produced vegetable growers use too many pesticides, John'," he mocks. "Except the ground needs fertilizer, and the rows need to be weeded, and the plants need water. They just don't grow themselves, ya know."

"Actually, that's… sort of what plants do."

"And I was thinking that I don't back out of shit. I finish what I start."

He watches Matt blink once, slowly, before leaning back in his chair. Yeah, let the kid stew on that for a while. "So," Matt says finally, "you got sunstroke and nearly fucking died—"

"I didn't nearly die, Jesus Christ."

"—and it was all because—"

John huffs out a breath. "Just go, kid. This ain't your concern anymore."

"—because, what, because I didn't want to move in with you? That's just…" Matt shakes his head, pushes his unruly hair out of his face and tries to meet John's eyes. "You know I love you, right?"

John stares resolutely at the cheap print on the wall by the door, clenches at the thin sheet with the hand hidden from Matt's view. There's another word that the kid tosses around so lightly. _Boyfriend. Love._ John had never had the first until Matt came along and knows enough to cherish the second, and this kid thinks he can just fling them around like toys, keep them balanced in the air like balls. It doesn't work like that.

"Fuck, John, just because I didn't want to… your house is like three inches big, dude! I know myself, I know you, and believe me, we would _kill_ each other in there. I need room to spread out my gear, and you need room to just… occasionally glower and talk to yourself. Actually, not so occasionally. You do that a lot." When Matt sighs, John can't help flicking his eyes the kid's way. He sees Matt lift his ass from the chair, drag the paper from his back pocket. "That's why I was looking at these," he says.

John's reflexes are still good, despite his age, despite the damn IV drip in his arm. He catches the folded newspaper easily, squints down at it and then side-glances the kid. "The classified ads?"

"I circled a few houses that I thought might fit us," Matt says. "With the income I'm bringing in doing all my consulting work plus your salary – as craptastic as it is after thirty plus years on the job, and seriously McClane, we should do something about that, start an internet petition or something…" Matt shakes his head again, flaps an arm in the air. "Tangent. My point is, with our combined incomes we should be able to find something a little bigger in a slightly better neighbourhood. Not that your part of town is anything to be embarrassed about – I know crime's low and if you want to watch a lot of sports on shitty seventeen inch tube TV's while sitting in a haze of smoke then your neighbourhood really has the bars for you – but I was thinking maybe something in an area that's a little more diverse. Something where every local restaurant within walking distance doesn't have a Tuesday night special on buffalo chicken wings. I was also thinking a bigger backyard so we can upgrade the garden, but with the current situation I'm kind of reconsidering that."

"Are you through?"

"I don't know," Matt says. "Are you going to get sunstroke again just to prove a goddamn point?"

"I didn't get—" John huffs out a breath, plucks the paper up from where it's fallen between the sheets and waves it in Matt's face. "Why the hell didn't you tell me?"

"I wanted to make sure we could afford it before I started going on about it," Matt says. He holds up a hand even as John is opening his mouth. "I know, I know, first time for everything, right McClane?"

"You read minds now too, kid?"

"I was going to surprise you this afternoon with those," Matt says, nudging his chin toward the paper. "Sue me for wanting to check out the market and do a little digging before I brought it up and we both got excited about the prospect. That is, I was assuming you'd be excited about the prospect. And not, you know, passed out in the middle of the tomatoes."

John leans back against the pillow, crunches the paper in his fist. He'd assumed when the kid mentioned sunstroke and that old coot from next door "saving his life" that it had been Rubenstein who saw him pass out and called the EMT. Knowing now that it was Matt who found him, Matt who had to come upon him face-planted in the goddamn dirt…

John holds out his hand. "C'mere."

He tugs at Matt's hand as soon as the kid touches him, pulls him down to sit on the side of the bed and rubs a thumb absently across Matt's palm. He pictures the old house in Brooklyn, the support beam in the basement where he painstakingly recorded Lucy and Jack's height every Thanksgiving when they visited – until the visits stopped happening. The deck in the back that he spent an entire spring and summer working on the year he joined AA and had to be constantly busy to avoid the siren call of the bottle. The bird's nest in the carport that he can never bear to tear down. 

In the end, it's just wood and mortar, brick and sweat. It hadn't been a home for a long time. Not until Matt came along. And a house of their own – that means a mortgage with two names on it. That means the long haul.

Maybe the kid knows more about how heavy some words are than he thought.

"I'm an ass," John says. "And I'm not sure why anybody would wanna live with me, kid. But if you're still willing…"

"I'm willing," Matt says. John notices that he doesn't exactly disagree with the 'ass' part, either. "And I think I do still want the larger backyard. If I buy you a big floppy sun hat, will you promise to wear it whenever you're gardening?"

John snorts out a laugh. "No."

"I can make you wear it."

John quirks a brow, glances from Matt's thin chest to his spindly little arms, and can't help smirking. "And just how do you think you'll do that?"

"Please, John," Matt says. "Withholding sex has worked for centuries."


End file.
